‘Linotype: The Film’ animates history of the printing press (Review Part I)
“Linotype: the Film” makes learning the BBI (boring, but important) interesting to journalism students, and has many departure points.
A print staff might focus on the impact of the printing press on mass communication, whereas a broadcast program might focus on the trajectory of the film from start to finish–from inception to production and marketing.
Provide students an opportunity to learn an alternative storytelling skill — create a digital timeline — while they discover the most important development in the newspaper business, outside of the the Internet.
The DVD holder contains a 30-page booklet of pictures, diagrams, and two articles: a brief history of the printing press written by the producer, Doug Wilson, and an interview of him.
According to the first section of the booklet, titled The Eighth Wonder of the World, “The Linotype became the most prominent typesetting machine in the world. Adapted to almost every written language, over 125,000 Linotypes were manufactured. Attempting to quantity the impact of the Linotype on the distribution of information would be as difficult as calculating the internet’s (sic) influence today.”
Using the booklet, Part 1 of this review shares a timeline produced with JS Timeline from a list of 10 free timeline makers.
